AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IDOLATRY — “CLEFS AU CHAMBRE DE TRISTÊSSE (A KEY TO THE ROOM OF SADNESS)”

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Apr 032015
 

Idolatry (photo be Pandemic Photography)

We have a video premiere for you. The song is brand new as well. It’s a stand-alone single by Idolatry from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and its title is “Clefs Au Chambre de Tristêsse (A Key To the Room of Sadness)“. It will appear exclusively on a split release with the Ohio black metal band Unrest. The video was created by Nashville-based NVS Productions, who has also produced videos for Wormreich (US), Hades (Norway), and Borgne (Switzerland).

Of course, you can skip the rest of this verbiage and just go hit the “play” button, but then you would miss a few warnings, which could be important for those with heart conditions or photosensitive epilepsy.

First, a warning about the music (or a teaser, depending on your tastes): This is grim, savage, skin-flaying black metal that cares nothing for trends. It is a horned salute to the regime of bands such as Gorgoroth, Behexen, and Sargeist. The music’s atmosphere is saturated with a sense of predatory menace and steeped in the ichor of gloom. When it’s not racing headlong in an explosion of barely controlled chaos, it’s stalking like a dirge. It’s also a riveting listen. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SERPENTRANCE — “THE BESEIGED SANCTUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 022015
 

 

I first came across the Russian band Serpentrance almost one year ago because a Facebook friend had posted a link to their first single, a killing track named “Obeisance To The Antiquity of Sin”. Details about the band were virtually non-existent, but I wrote about the song and I became their 60th “like” on Facebook. Two months later, a second Serpentrance hymn surfaced, a track named “Aphotic Temples”, and I wrote about that one, too. I still couldn’t find any details about the band, though by then their Facebook presence had risen to 294 likes. The word was spreading by word of mouth.

More months passed, and then in February of this year I saw the announcement that those worshippers of Total Death in Canada’s Vault of Dried Bones had released the first Serpentrance EP, a limited cassette edition named The Besieged Sanctum. It includes both of the songs identified above (though the title of “Obeisance” has been shortened to “Sin”), plus two others — and today we shudder to bring you a premiere of one of those other songs, a monstrous offering of primeval death metal named “The Tongueless Oracle”. But first, a few words about the EP as a whole. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PAGANLAND — “THE VOICE OF THE CARPATHIANS”

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Apr 012015
 

 

On April 27, Svarga Music will release the second album by Ukraine’s Paganland. Entitled Fatherland, the album is dedicated to Ukraine’s ongoing struggle against Russian encroachment to the east, while remaining rooted in Carpathian traditions. Today we bring you a premiere of the new album’s second track, “The Voice of the Carpathians”.

Though the band’s pride in their homeland and anger at the actions of its larger neighbor may have inspired the music, you don’t need to be politically engaged to be moved by it. “The Voice of the Carpathians” is blood-pumping, soul-stirring metal that feels genuinely heartfelt, and it’s easy to be caught up and carried away by the drama and the intensity of its fervor. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DAWN OF AZAZEL — “VASSALPLASTY”

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Apr 012015
 

 

Six years after 2009’s Relentless, New Zealand’s long-running Dawn of Azazel are poised for the release of their fourth album, The Tides of Damocles, via Unique Leader Records. To give you fair warning of the death metal devastation to come, we bring you the premiere of a lyric video for the new album’s third track, “Vassalplasty“.

The new album was recorded, mixed, and mastered last year at Mana Recording Studios (Cannibal Corpse, Hate Eternal, Goatwhore) in Tampa, Florida by Brian Elliot and J.J. Hrubovcak, and they did a superb job capturing the band’s raw ferocity without obscuring the intricacy of their compositions or their technical skill as performers. And as further icing on the cake, the album cover features the typically striking artwork of one of our favorite metal artists, New Zealand’s Nick Keller.

The lyric video, produced by Scott Rudd Film makes full use Keller’s dramatic creation, which captures the album’s conceptual theme — “the ocean as a metaphor for the forces of life that constantly assail and erode the will of those who seek power”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEATHBLOW — “MEANS TO AN END”

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Apr 012015
 

 

About 10 days ago NCS contributor KevinP introduced us, in cryptic fashion, to a thrash metal band from Salt Lake City, Utah, named Deathblow, and their new EP The Other Side of Darkness. At that point, Deathblow had released the EP’s title track, and today we bring you yet another song:  “Means To An End”.

In that earlier post KevinP hinted at the EP’s thematic subject matter, but only in a way that would be understandable by those already in the know — which did not include yours truly. I had to do some googling to figure it out. I’m not going to give the game away, so I’ll just mention the name “Seinfeld” and move on to the music — which kicks massive amounts of ass.

From the way the song begins, you wouldn’t guess that you’re about to be thrashed within an inch of your life. It’s a lead-heavy, doom-drenched dirge — but it’s a fitting introduction, because the music stays heavy even when it erupts in a volcanic spray of molten riffs and thundering percussion. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: GLOSON — “YEARWALKER”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Apr 012015
 

 

Last month we had the pleasure of premiering the final track on the new album by Sweden’s Gloson. Now we bring you a premiere of the entire four-song EP: Yearwalker.

Gloson drive like a V-8 Interceptor across the wasteland, but not as fast. Speed is not the object, the destination is not the point. The point is the relentless hammering of the pistons set against the desolation of the surrounding vistas, and the hypnotic power of the melodies.

Gloson’s engine is driven by thick, vibrating sludge riffs, prominent bass lines, and spine-shaking drum beats. In each song the band establish a repeating motif in the low end and then drive it forward inexorably, relentlessly pounding their messages of gloom and woe like the chanting of a mantra. But as powerful (and powerfully hypnotic) as these repeating motifs are, they are not the whole story. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SULPHUR AEON — “GATEWAY TO THE ANTISPHERE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  6 Responses »
Apr 012015
 

 

It would be sad if Sulphur Aeon’s new album failed to live up to the vivid Lovecraftian power and richly imagined detail of the cover art that Ola Larsson created for it. Thankfully, the sound is more than a match for the imagery: Gateway To the Antisphere is one of the most terrifying, and hands-down one of the best, death metal albums of this year. Today we have the privilege of streaming it for you in full.

Sulphur Aeon have mastered the art of seizing the listener’s imagination and hurling it through an inter-dimensional membrane into a dark place where you feel the writhing presence of monstrous forms. They seem to have a direct channel to R’lyeh and the Outer Gods. At the same time, they are equally adept at crafting immensely powerful and electrifying death metal songs.

On a purely technical level, the instrumental and vocal performances, and the production, are exceptional. The flensing riffs are fleet and savage, the eye-popping drumwork is precise and varied, and the vocals are multi-hued but never less than voracious. The production delivers these combined forces with clarity and galvanizing potency. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LE CHANT FUNEBRE — “GHOSTS AT THE DEATHBED”

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Mar 312015
 

 

Every metal fan has a mental list of musicians whose every creation they will check out, regardless of which band’s name flies on the banner above them. Jeff Wilson (Wolvhammer, Missing, Chrome Waves, Abigail Williams) and Neill Jameson (Krieg, Twilight) are two of the names on my list. When I heard they were collaborating together in a new project, I got a little surge of adrenaline in the bloodstream and an itch of curiosity in the brain. One thing led to another, and now the itch is partially scratched, but the adrenaline is still flowing: We bring you the premiere of “Ghosts at the Deathbed” by Le Chant Funebre.

This song is the title track on the band’s four-song debut EP, which will be released in digital form next month with a CD to follow, via Disorder Recordings and Black House Industries. In Le Chant Funebre, Wilson plays guitar, bass, and synth; Jameson provides vocals and drums; and guitarist Jason Phillips (Bringers of Disease, ex-Acheron) completes the line-up.

Given the nature of these musicians’ past projects, you might guess that black metal will play a role in the music, but this time that’s not the dominant style of the music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AKHLYS — “BREATH AND LEVITATION”

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Mar 312015
 

 

Naas Alcameth, best known for his work in Nightbringer, has had a separate project since 2009 known as Akhlys, whose second album will be soon released by Debemur Morti Productions. The new Akhlys album is entitled The Dreaming I, and as the title suggests, it was inspired by its creator’s uncommon dreams and the role of such lucid para-somnia experiences in esoteric belief and practice. One track from the album has previously premiered (“Consummation”), and today we have the pleasure of bringing you the debut of another track, the one that opens the album: “Breath and Levitation“.

Dreaming is the thematic subject of the album as well as the source of its inspiration, but we’re not talking about mundane, commonplace dreams — and the music is anything but mundane or commonplace. Clues to what lies within may be found in the name of this project. To quote from a recent interview by Nass Alcameth:

[Akhlys] was said to be the personification of the “death mist”, the clouding over of the eyes upon death, and in turn personified death, misery, despair, and so on. She was also said to have been an original personification of primordial darkness/night that existed before chaos. What we can determine from these fragments is that she was associated to both death and profound darkness, the two of which indicate a crossroads, or an inlet from life into the darkness beyond life. This crossing of the veil has much synchronicity with the crossing that can be experienced via certain lucid dream states and there is much intimacy between these parallels, that of death and of dreams.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SCALAFREA — “THE BASTARD ONE”

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Mar 302015
 

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of another new song by Scalafrea.)

Recently here at NCS, we premiered a phenomenal track called “Perceptions Of Time”,  by Colorado-based Death Metal band Scalafrea. The track comes from their upcoming EP, Opposites In Polarity. I covered the band’s background and dissected the elements of their sound in that first Scalafrea premiere, so instead of rehashing myself, those who want some more information on the band can go here.

Since I’ve always been a big fan of Scalafrea, and really think that their latest material is an impressive experience worthy of getting hyped about, we bring you another new song entitled “The Bastard One”. For those unfamiliar with the band, they play a very hodge-podge and spastic form of technical death metal with a progressive bend that’s also very well-written. Continue reading »

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